Contact - Swings & Misses - Strikeouts

[TheWarmWind]

Re: Contact - Swings & Misses - Strikeouts

I understand your opinion on sliders and why you're afraid to adjust them, but sliders are one of the best features in sports games, especially MLB the Show's sliders.

I used to be like you. I used to think that using sliders was cheating in some way, or forcing something in an unnatural way. But sliders are never absolute. You can have solid hits at 10 and still have the occasional weak chopper or pop out.

Sliders just effect tendencies. Even on my settings, a guy with poor vision can keep fouling off pitches from a guy with high K/9. The potential still exists, and it in fact happened recently where I had an 10 pitch at bat with one of my best strikeout pitchers on the mound vs some recent call-up low vision guy (he eventually bloop singled). What it impacts is the tendency over time. I'm not suddenly getting easy strikeouts, and if I were I'd adjust the sliders back up. One of the fundamental things I follow when building sliders is that the strike zone needs to be a threat for both human and the CPU.

[bcruise]

Re: Contact - Swings & Misses - Strikeouts

Just had a really good example of two things pertaining to this discussion in one at-bat - the foul balls with a PCI way off the mark, and one of my chased strikeouts showing it's still possible even with those:

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/3yZ2_UBMWOE" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Actually getting the Legend-difficulty CPU to expand the zone like this is why I'm trying to be really careful about making slider changes here. This isn't an accident or a fluke - I get a lot of K's like that after the CPU fouls some off.



Here's the "PCI contact" (formerly hit chance in past games) analysis for that at-bat. It's from the batter's perspective, so reversed from the video, of course. 6 and 7 is pretty high for how far the PCI was off, but it explains why they were fouls - that's how a lot of pitches with numbers like that end up. I'm not sure how much of that is because of Legend difficulty and how much is just the game's leniency on PCI placement.

[countryboy]

Re: Contact - Swings &amp; Misses - Strikeouts

Agree about the hesitancy to make slider changes, because like you I can get the CPU to chase pitches. I know my educated guess was 10-15%, but it may be higher like 20% as I said.

For me, everything else about hitting/pitching feels good on default except for the swing and miss aspect. Balls in play feel right. Solid hits feel right. Homeruns feel right. Walks feel right. It's just this one aspect and I'm afraid that changing sliders to "correct' this one issue will throw other aspects out of balance.

Thanks for the information bcruise.

And like you, I've missed these types of discussions on OS.

[bcruise]

Re: Contact - Swings &amp; Misses - Strikeouts

Another quickie - if I look to make slider adjustments, this is what I want to take out of the game:

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/ZpAuu5uz3WE" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Yes, Yelich missed, so the end result in this case was fine. But when I went to the PCI contact analysis it showed a 3. That means that going only by where his PCI was placed (not timing - it's not a factor in determining this particular number), the game was giving him a small chance to make contact. That needs to be a 0 and no chance for contact based on that PCI placement, even for Yelich - no if's and's or but's. His gigantic PCI itself is more than enough to make him as good of a hitter as he is in real life.

If PCI's that are that far off can result in 3's, then it's no wonder we're seeing foul tips (typically the 5-8 range in this analysis) that are clearly outside the PCI. And those extend at-bats and deny strikeouts.

[countryboy]

Re: Contact - Swings &amp; Misses - Strikeouts

Great input bcruise..

I think you may have found a culprit.

I'm going to start noting these as they come about when playing.

[Detroit Tigers]

Re: Contact - Swings &amp; Misses - Strikeouts

Gonna suggest it’s difficulty-level related because on All-Star I’m not seeing this at all. I get swings and misses in the zone very frequently, and they chase outside the zone more often than ever before too. My team ERA is somewhere in the mid-4s, and my overall K numbers are really good too (almost always somewhere between 5-10) so haven’t even considered changing difficulty.

As for the slider sub-topic in here: I appreciate not wanting to mess with them, but a little tweak here and there isn’t going to hurt anything. I could never play with SP stamina at 5 for example.


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[Vercingetirex]

Re: Contact - Swings &amp; Misses - Strikeouts

When you raise difficulty though, the PCI already increases to begin with. So why have the extra bonus of increasing the AI's ability to make contact with pitches far from it's PCI?



Wondering if the solution isn't to turn down timing to increase misses, but the contact slider itself. Based off the video evidence and data

[NolanRyansSnowmonkey]

Re: Contact - Swings &amp; Misses - Strikeouts

Gonna suggest it’s difficulty-level related because on All-Star I’m not seeing this at all. I get swings and misses in the zone very frequently, and they chase outside the zone more often than ever before too. My team ERA is somewhere in the mid-4s, and my overall K numbers are really good too (almost always somewhere between 5-10) so haven’t even considered changing difficulty.

As for the slider sub-topic in here: I appreciate not wanting to mess with them, but a little tweak here and there isn’t going to hurt anything. I could never play with SP stamina at 5 for example.

I can definitely see it being at least partly difficulty level related, especially this year. According to Ramone, the majority of users, by FAR, plays RTTS, and the other huge group plays Diamond Dynasty. "The rest", he says, play the other modes... Then, he also says 98% of players play on All Star difficulty or lower.

So, with the development focus on those massive groups, getting the game to play realistically on HOF/Legend with Default sliders would be the last thing on their minds. They expect these players to tune the game.

[countryboy]

Re: Contact - Swings &amp; Misses - Strikeouts

The thing is that difficulty level and tuning the game wasn't something I had to do last year. I didn't have this issue last year. I was able to generate swings and misses. I was able to get high strikeout counts with good pitchers. This is a problem this year.

As I said previously, nothing else pitching wise feels out of whack. The only hiccup I have is with "excessive" contact which leads to fewer swings and misses, thus resulting in lower strikeouts because at bats are being kept alive when I think they shouldn't. And this is on both sides.

So while I appreciate the suggestions, before I go lowering difficulty or adjusting sliders, I wanted to:

A) Verify that there was an "issue" by seeing if others in the community were seeing it

B) Try to determine the cause whether it be something within the game that changed, or if it was me needing to get better at understanding the new changes to pitching and hitting.

[Rmiok222]

Re: Contact - Swings &amp; Misses - Strikeouts

I’ve been using HOF. I have this issue too. Today I set human control at 5, human consistency at 6. Cpu contact at 4, power at 5, timing 4, foul freq 4 and solid hits 4

I had ten strikeouts which was nice to see. I’m going to stick with that for now and see how it goes.


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[Rmiok222]

Re: Contact - Swings &amp; Misses - Strikeouts

I think FenwayMac is onto something with his HOF pitching sliders honestly. I’ll be trying them tomorrow.


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[Drty_Windshield]

Re: Contact - Swings &amp; Misses - Strikeouts

I think FenwayMac is onto something with his HOF pitching sliders honestly. I’ll be trying them tomorrow.


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Did you give up on the legend sliders I sent you?

[Rmiok222]

Re: Contact - Swings &amp; Misses - Strikeouts

Did you give up on the legend sliders I sent you?

No I’ve been tweaking them tho to my own play style. It’s a fantastic base. Typically I test multiple sliders at once. I’m not sure I can do Legend pitching! Lol


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[Drty_Windshield]

Re: Contact - Swings &amp; Misses - Strikeouts

No I’ve been tweaking them tho to my own play style. It’s a fantastic base. Typically I test multiple sliders at once. I’m not sure I can do Legend pitching! Lol


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That's cool.

[ninertravel]

Re: Contact - Swings &amp; Misses - Strikeouts

my issue is the only time I strikeout is with off speed stuff when I swing early and check swing.. so it is either a ball or a check swing and strikeout I am a expert on check swinging so I am doing it 80% of the time. so I am good at getting walks seeing as the umpires apparel 90% of the time is a ball it helps too. but my issue is I never get natural strikeouts from a swing and a miss.

I bet if I turn the pitch speed up though this might help me and I might swing more at balls and strikeout more naturally.